Quotes & Sayings About Stone Mountain

This Stone

He went looking for a road
that doesn't lead to death.
He went looking for that road
and found it.
It was a stone road.
He walked that road
that doesn't lead to death.
He walked on it awhile
before he stopped,
having turned to stone.
Now he stands there on that road
that doesn't lead to death
not going anywhere.
He can't dance.
from his eyes stones fall.
The rainbow people pass him
crossing that road, long-legged, light-stepping,
going from the Four Houses
to the dancing in the Five Houses.
They pick up his tears.
This stone is a tear
from his eye, this stone
given me on the mountain
by one who died before my birth,
this stone, this stone. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The mountain of despair has dwindled, and the stone of hope has size and shape, and can be fondled by the eyes and by the hand. But freedom has always been an elusive tease, and in the very act of grabbing for it one can become shackled. — Alice Walker

Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed. — Nicole Beharie

How to Climb a Mountain

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you're on, and even the dark won't stop you. — Maya Stein

you'll see each fetus wizen up inside its fertile womb. Yet drip it into the veins of Congress or a Corporation, just watch those Mountain Men outwrestle steers, gulping their liquid god go wildly enthusiastic so they can write laws in stone with one hand while joysticking lovers with the other, sacking Montana and out-dunking Jordan, out-leveraging - who was it, Archimedes, popped the world's blue eyeball into a Swiss snowbank? See, ghettoites, how sociable our masters are, these Bacchanalians, never alcoholic, immune in suburbs where bad sex has died and gone to heaven, no AIDS, no illegitimate children, all the schools have classic curricula and every personal fetus will be delivered right on time, uncorked like Chateauneuf du Pape, unscrewed like Southern Comfort to gurgle on its snowy tablecloth, caress with rosy fingers its parents' egos and become a tax loophole. Classic, ah Classic these Metamorphoses — MariJo Moore

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 32 This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 33 his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
Daniel 2:31-35 AKJV — Anonymous

That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone! — William Wordsworth

Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain? — Stanislaw Lem

Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. — Martin Luther

We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house. — Annie Dillard

who sought heaven
under a mountain of stone,
sat thinking
till he realized
the land of blessedness exists
in the imagination - — Allen Ginsberg

the Devil became desperate to get away. His way was blocked, so he bit a big chunk out of the mountaintop and carried it off in his mouth. Patrick, stunned at the size of the hole in the mountain, hesitated for a moment, and lost his advantage. By the time he looked up, the Devil had gone too far ahead to be caught. Patrick gave up the chase. Up ahead, at Cashel, the Devil stopped for a rest, and he dropped the stone out of his mouth. That stone became the Rock of Cashel, the most famous sight in Ireland. — Frank Delaney

The god of creation broke me from stone
The mountain's the only ma I've known
My pa is the blue sky sheltering me
So stone I am and stone I'll be — Shannon Hale

Lada made her face stone, her heart a mountain. A mountain that would never be pierced to let cold, clear water flow. "Nothing holds me here. — Kiersten White

They say I am a brave girl
I'm a hailstorm for the rain
I'm a volcano for the mountain
I'm a diamond for the stone
And I wonder if I can be real me.
I see the crowd
I hear the noise
I keep my patience.
But inside I want to scream
Yes I want to scream like hell.
And when she call me on phone,
I wonder how she knows it.
I wonder how she hears those silent words..
How she sees those forbidden tears ...
I wonder how she knows I am missing somewhere ... — Emma Brynstein

I'm going to die one day. I know it's coming for me, too. I'll be a mountain, I'll be a stone on the beach. I'll be nourishment. — Mary Oliver

It wasn't the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness. — George L. Ayers

I saw the mountain, impassible, cavernous, secret, where from morning to night I'd hear nothing but the wind, the curlews, the clink like distant silver of the stone-cutters' hammers. — Samuel Beckett

Insofar as a purely transient construction of flesh and blood can remember (or foretell) what it is to be stone, Lucy understood the mountain's wish to listen at the window of a den of gamblers and be warmed by all that free-floating hope and desolation. — Helen Oyeyemi

Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you. A mountain is not a man, though, and a stone is a mountain's daughter. I trust myself, and I trust my mules. I won't fall. — George R R Martin

One day an intrepid sole will climb this mountain on its east side, reaching the summit and the passage that exist between the main peak and secondary peaks, by which he can descend to the west side of the mountain. It is at this site near Lake Brunner, between the main peak and an adjacent stone pyramid, in a "hidden cave" that has been sealed by earthquakes common in the region ... where lust for Inca gold must end for some ... but for that intrepid sole ... it shall be just the beginning! — Steven J. Charbonneau

From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. — Terry Pratchett

I grew up partially around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in that part of the country, there was always this aura of mythology and palpable sense of otherness about being a Southerner. — Kara Walker

It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they've got the time-span all wrong. From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well. — Terry Pratchett

Yet even so, Jon Snow was not sorry he had come. There were wonders here as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of sheer stone cliffs, and a mountain meadow full of autumn wildflowers, blue coldsnaps and bright scarlet frostfires and stands of piper's grass in russet and gold. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell, and he had ridden his garron over a wind-eaten bridge of natural stone with nothing but sky to either side. Eagles nested in the heights and came down to hunt the valleys, circling effortlessly on great blue-grey wings that seemed almost part of the sky. — George R R Martin

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened pines; Odor of basswood upon a mountain slope, A scene beloved of bees; Silence of water above a sunken tree: The pure serene of memory of one man,- A ripple widening from a single stone Winding around the waters of the world. — Theodore Roethke

Well, you know how a river moves a mountain." The words surprised me at first, but I knew where they were coming from. "Stone by stone," she finished. — Lisa Wingate

The woman who remove a mountain begins by taking away small stone — Kevwe Eyagbe

As for me, I delight in the every day Way Among mist-wrapped vines and rocky caves Here in the wilderness I am completely free With my friends, the white clouds, idling forever There are roads, but they do not reach the world Since I am mindless, who can rouse my thoughts On a bed of stone I sit, alone in the night While a round moon climbs up Cold Mountain — Hanshan

Ride!' went the call, and the individuals of the troop became a single lurching, streaming mass of horseflesh pounding toward the trees.
The first of the men reached the tree line moments before the sound became a roar, the crack and crash of stones, of huge granite boulders large enough to smash into other parts of the cliff and send them driving downwards. The thundering sound, echoing off the walls of the mountain, was frightening and panicked the horses almost more than the boulders at their heels. It was as though the whole surface of the cliff loosened, dissolved into a liquid surface: a rain of stone, a rolling wave of stone. — C.S. Pacat

Stonesnake had passed the rope around the smooth spike of rock he was waiting on, but as soon as Jon reached him he shook it loose and was off again. This time there was no convenient cleft when he reached the end of their tether, so he took out his felt-headed hammer and drove a spike deep into a crack in the stone with a series of gentle taps. Soft as the sounds were, they echoed off the stone so loudly that Jon winced with every blow, certain that the wildlings must hear them too. When the spike was secure, Stonesnake secured the rope to it, and Jon started after him. Suck on the mountain's teat, he reminded himself. Don't look down. Keep your weight above your feet. Don't look down. Look at the rock in front of you. There's a good handhold, yes. Don't look down. I can catch a breath on that ledge there, all I need to do is reach it. Never look down. — George R R Martin

Now the valley cried with anger, "Mount your horses draw your sword." And they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward. Now they stood beside the treasure, on the mountain dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it. "Peace on earth" was all it said. Go ahead and hate your neighbor,go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day. On the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away. — Dennis Lambert

The problem that first demands solution is to discover the disruptive agent which would be potent enough to rip the Cloghvorra Stone from its parent bed, to bear it down the valley for miles, and to cast it on the mountain side. — Robert Stawell Ball

It is not necessary that every mountain has a precious stone's mine, every elephants forehead is adorned with the mother of pearl, every place is inhabited by gentlemen and every forest contains sandalwood trees. In other words, this world is inhabited by people of different characteristics. We must, therefore, develop contacts only with gentlemen and superior persons. This will ensure fulfilment of the desired work. — R.P. Jain

I strained to hear a voice from that stone, or grave, as if beneath it were hidden the secret of life and death. I sat on the cliff's edge, above the endless forests and crags and listened to the snakelike hissing of the mountain wind, in a twofold wasteland of loneliness and nonexistence, like the ancient corpse under the slab. — Mesa Selimovic

The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh and river. It is built broad, straight and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sight-seers to silence - though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position - — Robert Graves

My words were Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta stone; my words were wounded soldiers limping home, guns spent, from a lost battle; my words were dying fish, flipping hysterically as the net is opened and the pile spreads across the boat deck like a slippery mountain trying to become a prairie.
My words were, and are, unworthy of Marianne Engel. — Andrew Davidson

I have just drunk the waters of Changsha
And come to eat the fish of Wuchang.
Now I am swimming across the great Yangtze,
Looking afar to the open sky of Chu.
Let the wind blow and waves beat,
Better far than idly strolling in a courtyard.
Today I am at ease.
"It was by a stream that the Master said--
'Thus do things flow away!' "
Sails move with the wind.
Tortoise and Snake are still.
Great plans are afoot:
A bridge will fly to span the north and south,
Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare;
Walls of stone will stand upstream to the west
To hold back Wushan's clouds and rain
Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges.
The mountain goddess if she is still there
Will marvel at a world so changed. — Mao Zedong

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? — Kahlil Gibran

Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky 'Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You're all that I can call my own. — Maya Angelou

I have found that the people who shout their opinion the loudest are usually the ones most insecure in their position.
I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.
It's not that there wasn't anything to say. It's that there was too much and words were poor substitutes for our feelings.
But Korczak's greatest legacy is not a public one, the massive stone mountain that he conquered, but the mountain he first conquered in himself-a mountain that he climbed alone-in this we can all empathize. (about the sculptor of Crazy Horse) — Richard Paul Evans

The King beneath the mountains,
The King of carven stone,
The lord of silver fountains
Shall come into his own!
His crown shall be upholden,
His harp shall be restrung,
His halls shall echo golden
To songs of yore re-sung.
The woods shall wave on mountains.
And grass beneath the sun;
His wealth shall flow in fountains
And the rivers golden run.
The streams shall run in gladness,
The lakes shall shine and burn,
And sorrow fail and sadness
At the Mountain-king's return! — J.R.R. Tolkien

And this is where I learned that sometimes our most holy mountain-moving faith looks more like spending our whole lives making that mountain move, rock by rock, pebble by pebble, unsexy day after daily day, casting the mountain to the sea stone by stone rather than watching a mountain suddenly rise up and cast itself. — Sarah Bessey

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. — John Muir

Peace is Letting Go
Returning to the Silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too pure to be contained in words. This is why the tree, the stone, the river, and the mountain are quiet. — Malidoma Patrice Some

I crawled over the mountain of death, Watching the corpses roll down like the stones. Searching for the light which everyone always spoke of. I fought the wolves and also the death, and knocked the door, which already had a thousand handprints, soaked with blood. The door opened finally and I saw the light, which hit me in the heart and pushed me down the steep. I fell into the never ending pit, watching others crawl up the mountain in the search of light. — Akshay Vasu

So many today are worshiping in the mountains, big churches, stone and frame buildings. But Jesus teaches that salvation is not in these stone structures-not in the mountains-not in the hills, but in God. — William J. Seymour

Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged — Rumi

I once did a Sprite commercial where I had to come out of the train station, jump out of a turnstile, jump on the side of a moving train. I had to run down the top of this moving train while it was going through the mountains and valleys. It was really hairy. I got my honorary stuntwoman card for that. I was proud. — Sharon Stone

Imagine now a different scene. Aaron and the Israelites are patiently and faithfully waiting for Moses to return. Finally, they see him coming down. But rather than tablets of stone, he carries the golden calf. And then they hear him speak: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (Exod. 32:4). The prophet himself would have now engaged in idolatric substitution. He ascended the mountain to meet with God, but he has returned with an idol. Impossible? It happens every day, and to the best of ordinary prophets, even if it does not happen in such a crass way: the prophets may carry down from the mountain the tablets of stone, but at least some of the writing on them can be traced to the golden calf rather than to the true God of Israel. — Miroslav Volf

Thingumy and Bob sighed contentedly and settled down to contemplate the precious stone. They stared in silent rapture at it.
The ruby changed colour all the time. At first it was quite pale, and then suddenly a pink glow would flow over it like sunrise on a snow capped mountain
and then again crimson flames shot out of its heart and it seemed like a great black tulip with stamens on fire. — Tove Jansson

Haska - a dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too, scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the page grows musty. — Jack London

Full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity. — John Muir

Heavens is here 'neath the mountain walls,
In the song of the wind and the waterfalls,
In the watchful stars that blanket the night
And the music of birds before the dawn light.

Heaven is here in our mountain keep.
In the silence and dim of the forest deep,
From the chestnut tall as the mightiest mast,
To the laurel flowers in the shadow it casts.

Heaven is here on theses mountains high,
In ancient stone castles that challenge the sky,
In the thunder and flash that ring from their fight
And the meadows made gold by the day's final light. — Michael Oechsle

III
But may I, when alone again I have the city's crush
and tangled noise-skein and the furor
of its traffic all around me,
may I above the mindless swirl
recall sky and the gentle mountain rim
on which the far-off herd curved homeward.
May my spirit be hard as rock
and the shepherd's life to me seem possible-
the way he drifts and turns brown in the sun and with a practiced
stone-throw mends his flock, whenever it frays.
Steps slow, not light, his body pensive,
but in his standing there, majestic. Even now a god
might enter this form and not be lessened.
He lingers for a while, then moves on, like the day itself,
and shadows of the clouds
pass through him, as though space were slowly
thinking thoughts for him. — Rainer Maria Rilke

We have to recognize that we're nothing, the Pastor says. In the surface world, when they returned from the mine and showered and entered their homes, they were princes, kings, spoiled sons, well-fed fathers, Romeos. They believed their private worlds of home and family spun thanks to their labor, and that as workingmen and breadwinners they had every right to expect their world to revolve around their needs. Now the heart of the mountain has collapsed on top of them, and they are trapped by a block of stone, an object whose newness and perfection suggest, to some, a divine judgment. — Hector Tobar

I'm not from the heart of Atlanta, I'm from the Eastern outskirts. Stone Mountain is the town - Gambino is from there, Danger Mouse is from there. So there's a lot more greenery, lakes and a mountain you can climb everyday - all kinds of stuff that I'm into. I wear sandals, or a harness - I'm prepared to be outdoors because that's just how I am. — Gucci Mane

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree. — Susan Cooper

The sound of the wind stretches its limbs.
The jazz music witholds some of its ruckus.
Hands move something in the dark.
I say: just an old romanticism...
No matter, the place will fit everything.

Vision descends upon flaccid pathways
and rides them on cheap metal.
Dried out trees and others take their water
from the drowned sand by force.
I say: a passing depression.
No matter, the place will fit everything.
During the day the sun approaches the mountain,
places its hand upon it,
its cold hand of lovers,
strikes stone with stone.
Mountain scrub dances behind the stone.
The sun does not see it.
Only the moon shines upon it all the way beyond the bend
and the guardian stones watch from afar.
I say: a passing coincidence.
No matter, the place will fit everything. — Ashur Etwebi

To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret. — James Hutton

Thursday afternoon, the dark clouds closed in, and by Friday morning a heavy rain was falling. The mountain peaks were hazy sentinels, disappearing into misty fog that clung to the valley. — Danika Stone

The best way to move a mountain is one stone at a time. Nothing is insurmountable if you take one step before you take the next. — Debbie Shapiro

Lou stood at the kitchen sink, her eyes unfocused on her hazy reflection in the window. Outside the sky was fading from steely blue to indigo. The mountain range beyond was a solid sheet of black, cut out by a child's sloppy scissors. — Danika Stone

With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. — Peter Matthiessen

Did you blame the men who fired the guns, the men who built the guns, or the men who invented the guys? Did you blame the men who had put those particular guns in the hands attached to those particular trigger fingers? When Nick's plane crashed into the ocean off Honduras at a speed which turned the ocean to unyielding stone, was it Western Mountain's fault, for sending him out?Nick's, for going? Anne's, for letting him? Did you blame the human beings who had made such a world possible, or the world that had made such human beings possible?
The answer, she thought, lying now in her missing daughter's bed (Was it Miranda, for pushing a limit any time she saw one? Anne again, for uprooting her so callously, for failing in some way to adequately console her after her father's death?), was that you had two choices: you could blame everybody, or you could blame nobody. — Kelly Braffet

If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from. — Mark Nepo

Once, he told them the truth. Chiseled a single commandment upon a slab of stone: That is how to live: in the choosing. There are no rules but those you make for yourself. The man to whom he'd entrusted the tablet promptly shattered it, chiseled ten precise commands upon two stone slabs and carried them down a mountain with the pomp and circumstance of a prophet. Religious wars ravaged that world ever since. — Karen Marie Moning

Buddhist say that thoughts are like drops of water on the brain; when you reinforce the same thought, it will etch a new stream into your consciousness, like water eroding the side of a mountain. Scientist confirm this bit of folk wisdom: our neurons break connections and form new pathways all the time. Even if you've been programmed to fear death, that particular pathway isn't set in stone. Each of us is responsible for seeking out new knowledge and creating mental circuits. — Caitlin Doughty

I stood there and stared at it - this colorful expanse of paper, with its topographic mountain ranges and changeable shades of blue to depict the various depths of the ocean - and saw a map of the world, but knew it wasn't mine. My world was much, much smaller — Tamara Ireland Stone

Like so much in Atlanta, Stone Mountain had become a bland and inoffensive consumable: the Confederacy as hood ornament. Not for the first time, though more deeply than ever before, I felt a twinge of affinity for the neo-Confederates I'd met in my travels. Better to remember Dixie and debate its philosophy than to have its largest shrine hijacked for Coca-Cola ads and MTV songs. — Tony Horwitz

A massive beast dashed along the mountain apex.
Astamur reached for his rifle. "A demon?"
"No, not a demon." I might have preferred one . "That's my boyfriend."
Atsany and the shepherd turned to look at me. "Boyfriend?" Astamur said.
Curran saw us. He paused on a stone crag and roared. The raw declaration of strength cracked through the mountains, rolling down the cliffs like a rockslide. "Yep. Don't worry. He's harmless. — Ilona Andrews

You should see the waterways of Dale, Frodo, and the fountains, and the pools! You should see the stone-paved roads of many colours! And the halls and cavernous streets under the earth with arches carved like trees; and the terraces and towers upon the Mountain's sides! Then you would see that we have not been idle. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The story of each stone leads back to a mountain. — W.S. Merwin

By the Valg, three were made,
Of the gate-Stone of the Wyrd:
Obsidian the gods forbade
And stone they greatly feared.

In grief, he hid one in the crown
Of her he loved so well,
To keep with her where she lay down
Inside the starry cell.

The second one was hidden
In a mountain made of fire,
Where all men are forbidden
Despite their great desires.

Where the third lies
Will never be told
By voice or tongue
Or sum of gold. — Sarah J. Maas

When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain ... — Robinson Jeffers

There is so much to say about a past. It's a vein of gold through a mountain, leading to an incontrovertible stone heart of truth. But the future is a horizon - a faintly visible line that will promise much, and always remain to far away to touch. — Aliya Whiteley

As the track bends north-east, the ethereal sandstone disappears. The slopes turn black with granite, and the mountain's lower ridges break into unstable spikes and revetments. Their ribs are slashed in chiaroscuro, and their last outcrops pour towards the valley in the fluid, anthropomorphic shapes that pilgrims love. The spine and haunches of a massive stone beast, gazing at Kailas, are hailed as the Nandi bull, holy to Shiva; another rock has become the votive cake of Padmasambhava. — Colin Thubron

It was that reader that she'd found in Mama's trunk. At the schoolhouse they had McGuffey, good lessons about good boys and girls. But Meggie had found the worn, faded book of fairy tales. They had been much more interesting than the stern admonitions of McGuffey. And her imagination had taken flight. Fanciful, that's what her father had called it. And when she'd read about Rapunzel, she'd decided that none of the local boys would ever do. A real prince was coming up the mountain for Meggie Best someday. She was sure of it. Unfortunately, this morning she'd thought that he'd arrived. — Pamela Morsi

Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows. — Annie Dillard

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. — Albert Camus

The residence sat toward the back of the property, which sloped up across a masterfully landscaped yard shaded with maple and spruce trees, dotted with stone sculptures - fountains, birdbaths, angels - and not a leaf to be seen on the pockets of lush green grass. An engine turned over near the house. Letty stepped off the drive and crawled into a thicket of mountain laurel as a boxy Mercedes G-Class rolled past. Through the branches and tinted glass, she glimpsed Chase at the wheel, a young boy in a booster in the backseat. The car ride over had only intensified her nausea, and as the diesel engine faded away, she put her finger down her throat and retched in the leaves. She felt instantly better. Weaker. Less drunk. But better. — Blake Crouch

Mountains have been formed by one [or other] of the causes of the formation of stone, most probably from agglutinative clay which slowly dried and petrified during ages of which we have no record. It seems likely that this habitable world was in former days uninhabitable and, indeed, submerged beneath the ocean. Then, becoming exposed little by little, it petrified in the course of ages. — Avicenna